Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

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We get some hands-on time with Raven's next venture into Jedi lore.

By Steve Butts

It'd be hard for some of us to say goodbye to Kyle Katarn. The good guy gone bad guy gone good guy (sort of) has been close to our hearts for some time now. Though he's fought valiantly against a range of difficult enemies, now he must step aside and let the next generation's Jedi get some playtime. Such is progress, I suppose.

Luckily, the sequel to Jedi Outcast doesn't ask you to play as Kyle. Hiking your pants up to your armpits and arguing with the representatives from the Republic AARP office doesn't necessarily make for great gameplay. Instead, you'll be playing through Jedi Academy as an entirely new jedi student under the tutelage of Kyle Katarn.

In contrast to the pre-set look of Kyle, your character in this game is chosen from a range of different races and a range of appearances within each race. Kel Dor, Rhodian, Twi'lek, Zabrak and Human Jedis of either gender allow you to be a bit more personal when designing your character (and it really helps avoid confusion in multiplayer).

The story picks up a few years after the events of Jedi Outcast. Luke Skywalker's trying to reestablish the Jedi and strengthen his training Academy. Since he's woefully short of teachers, he's asked Kyle Katarn to act as your instructor. Starting with a training lightsaber, you'll need to acquaint yourself with your special abilities as you and Kyle sort out trouble across the galaxy. Eventually the training wheels are taken off your lightsaber and Luke begins to send you out to fix some real problems.

There's much more choice available among the missions now. Instead of being directed through the episodes in a purely linear fashion, you're free to pick from among five different mission paths. Each progresses fairly directly but you're free to stop progress along one branch and investigate another. This is helpful if you ever really get stuck but don't want to stop playing. And if you get really stuck, you can even skip the mission altogether and pick up the story at the start of the next mission.

Of course, everyone will think you're a big idiot for not being able to find your own way out of the trash compactor level, so I suppose use of this feature depends on how bad you want to finish the game.

You'll be able to choose a new Force powers at the end of each mission. While the previous game did a good job of offering up specific powers to you at key points in the story, Jedi Academy allows you to shape your own advancement. Light and Dark Side affinity also factors in to power selection and use, with some powers, like choking some dude or lightninging him to death, clearly being on the Dark Side.

Five new Force powers are on tap for the sequel. Both Light and Dark Jedis can use Force Sight. Force Sight allows players to see other characters through walls and other obstructions. This really helps you to know whether or not you need to go in swinging or take a more cautious approach when entering new rooms. On the Light side players will be able to take advantage of Force Absorb and Force Protect. (I wonder what they do.) The Dark Side gets its new power with Force Rage. When Force Rage is active, your character goes berserk and starts laying waste to enemies left and right. Dark Jedis will also be able to use Force Drain to clear up those nasty hair clogs Kyle's starting to find in his shower.

And you'll be doing it with some new lightsabers. Like we said before, you do get a lightsaber right at the start, and though it's weak, you can gain better and better versions throughout the game. The chance to customize the look of the handle and the color of the blade are available right from the start. Beyond that, you'll also have the chance to fight with dual lightsabers or even the dreaded double-headed lightsaber like that red dude used before that other dude iced him.

With the new lightsaber types, there are plenty of new movements and actions. The double-headed lightsaber features a Darth Maul-like style that allows for kicks, for instance. And since there are still three separate stances for each single lightsabers -- a fast one for dueling, a vigorous one for smashing, and one inbetween -- as well as new stances for the dual and staff lightsabers, there are even more moves to be considered.

In multiplayer you can still count on a kind of duel mode and straight deathmatch. Thankfully, there are some alternatives to some of the other game types the last game was saddled with. Instead of playing Capture the Ysimarli (or however the heck you spell it) you can now play Siege. This sounds a lot like the awesome objective-based missions in Wolfenstein. Two teams, Rebel and Imperial, have to compete to achieve different objectives. A Rebel base may be the site of an assault game with victory going to the Imperial team if they can destroy the base. And instead of relying on Jedis and marksmen, Siege will allow for varying character classes, letting you send in a lone demolition expert to blow up the base while the other members of the team protect him from harm. Some multiplayer modes will even allow players to ride mounts like Tauntauns or drive vehicles like AT-STs.

The player limits on the PC version will likely be softly set at sixteen. Since the game is built on the Quake 3 engine, it's conceivable that the game could support more players than that, but the team is too concerned about the quality of the experience to promise that 32 or even 64 players will be supported. The game will support Xbox Live this time around but there have been no definite decisions about player limits there.

The game should be going gold within a matter of weeks and will ship for the PC sometime in mid-September. The Xbox version won't be out quite that quickly. Currently the team predicts a November release. We'll be bringing you more on this game in the coming weeks.